This project involves rapid development of a small pilot collection of 50 to 100 Native Science resources that will serve as a prototype for culturally-competent cross-cultural science digital library collections. "Cultural competence is defined as the ability to relate and communicate effectively when individuals involved in the interaction do not share the same culture, ethnicity, language or other salient variables" (GEO 2000). So cultural competence is an essential criterion of the successful multi- or cross-cultural collection. A culturally competent resource or collection should present accurate, non-stereotypical, and non-judgmental views of the ideas, objects, and other aspects of the culture(s) it represents; should communicate, whenever possible, in the language(s) of the culture(s) it represents; and should communicate, whenever possible, within the cultural paradigms of learning and knowing of the culture(s) it represents.
This collection will serve the 2.07 million Native Americans residing within the continental United States and Alaska, will provide an important science education resource for Native American students at all levels, and will help recruit Native Americans into SMET careers. It will stimulate additional Indigenous collections of science resources, as well as collections competent in other non-Western cultures, and will bring Native Americans and other members of underrepresented groups into the Digital Library community as contributors. The pilot collection will also serve the general American public and engage learners who are not usually interested in science but are interested in Native American culture. The collection will serve DLESE by providing a concrete example of "a culturally diverse collection" for policy development, and a template for the development of more such collections The collection will serve the American scientific reseach community and the public that relies on it, by diversifying the ways that research scientists, and Americans in general, think about science and the natural world itself.
